


All That Hocus Pocus

by Pollydoodles



Series: Hocus Pocus [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-10 11:30:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7843237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pollydoodles/pseuds/Pollydoodles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy Lewis does a good deed, and rescues a cat from outside her local grocers.<br/>All she wanted was to be a good person, and maybe catch up with the other, more traditional, witches. She's in for a nasty shock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Night One

The cat sat on her windowsill and flicked its tail. 

Darcy grimaced. She had a feeling that her cat wasn’t supposed to be giving her a look like it wasn’t impressed with her, but then again she’d never had a cat before. Maybe that was what cats did. 

She’d not even managed to get herself a black cat. All the traditional witches had black cats, but Darcy couldn’t even get that right. This one was calico and had a seriously bad attitude. 

“Guess that’s what I get for finding you in a battered cardboard box outside the grocers.” She grumbled, scrunching her nose up at the cat, which regarded her impassively from the windowsill. “All the other witches get proper cats, from proper pet shops, but I gotta go find the sad hobo cat and bring him home instead.”

The cat meowed. Or, at least, that’s what Darcy interpreted the odd noise that came out of it as. It was a cat. Cats meow. Therefore, it meowed. 

“Are you broken?” She asked, resisting the urge to poke it with a spoon. “You're meant to be grateful, you know. I rescued you.”

And she had. For behind the grocers, in a cardboard box that was falling apart in the rain, was a large calico with distinctive dark markings around its eyes. Wet and huddled against what was left of the box - and rapidly disappearing - Darcy had felt something tighten in her chest.

Getting him home was a different story.

She'd had to wrestle him into the back of her tiny little car and had the battle scars to prove it. 

“Yeah, okay, I know the car is shitty.” 

She huffed at the backseat when she'd finally managed to get him in there. Sitting herself heavily into the driver’s seat and hauling at the seat belt until it groaned its way across her and into the buckle at the side, she fought the urge to drop her head onto the steering wheel in defeat. Addressing the backseat, where the cat sat looking as though she’d personally murdered its entire family, Darcy explained the state of the car.

“It's a combination of a lack of funds and a little too much magic.”

Darcy had issues with anything too modern. Not that she wanted to have issues, just that she had too much magic fizzing around inside her veins and it tended to break anything that relied too much on computers.

So, as a result, she had the oldest car she could both afford and afford to keep running, and even then it broke down at alarmingly regular intervals. Unable to take it to a garage for fear of accidentally blowing up every other car they had in the shop, she'd had to hit the library and read up on basic car maintenance - something she was certain her Salem ancestors were facepalming about. 

“It's not like I can learn it all off YouTube.” She’d grumbled, hefting home yet another idiot’s guide. “And it's alright for you lot. You didn't have to worry about things like electricity.” This she addressed to the grimoire sat open on her desk. The idiot’s guide she dumped next to it. 

The grimoire, the culmination of her family's history of magic, written in for centuries by Lewis witches, had regarded her impassively. If it thought anything about what Darcy was doing, it kept its secrets to itself. Which was a quality one could not always count on applying to magical books, and so Darcy had at least been pleased by that.

It was another reason she didn't date much. Or, at least, the reason she told herself she didn't date much. It absolutely had nothing to do with her awkwardness and lack of social grace. And the fact that it was hard to explain to non-magic people how the world really worked, without them doing something ridiculous, like trying to burn you at the stake. 

“Okay,” Darcy muttered, half to herself and half to the cat. “That happens a little more than you’d necessarily feel comfortable with, given we’re living in the twenty first century now.” The cat looked for all the world as though it had raised an eyebrow at her, but Darcy shrugged the feeling away. It was a cat, doing cat things. 

Only cat things. 

Jane, her best friend and confidant, someone with whom she'd struck up an unlikely friendship with over the years, loyally agreed that it was definitely the witch-thing that made it hard for her to date, but suggested that all the candles might at least lend a romantic vibe to a dating situation.

“Yeah, Foster,” Darcy said, rolling her eyes. “But before we get back here to the romantic candlelit part, I have to charm him through the dinner part.”

Jane opened her mouth to answer, and Darcy jumped right in. 

“And no, before you pipe up, actual charming is not an option.”

Jane wasn't a witch. That was the unlikely part of their friendship. Jane was a scientist, and Darcy was banned from coming within twenty foot of her lab.

“Sorry Darce,” she'd said, looking apologetic as she shoved her backwards out of the door, the second time Darcy had attempted to visit her for lunch. The first time hadn’t gone particularly well, but Darcy was nothing if not an optimist. Even if there had been an actual meltdown. “It's not that I don't want you there, it's just that I've worked a really long time on this experiment and I don't need it-”

“Going up in flames, gotcha.” Darcy had answered, and she did get it. Science on the other hand, she did not get. Darcy was the first to hold her hands up to not being the best at magic, but at least she didn't have to have a cold shower if the generator packed up. 

“Why won't you eat cat food? It's nice, look.”

Darcy poked the gelatinous mound with a fork, and it fell apart with an unappetising squelch on the saucer. The cat blinked at her. Darcy sighed.

“I mean, lots of cats eat it. It’s a whole thing. Maybe you don’t know that, being a dumpster kitty.” She offered, gesturing with the fork towards the cat. It stared back at her, and flicked the end of its tail. If it were possible to flick a tail menacingly, the cat was managing it. Darcy rolled her eyes. 

“Steak?”

The cat wrapped its tail around itself as it sat, looking like a little prince prepared to be waited on, hand and foot. Darcy snorted. 

“Figures.” She muttered. “Darcy Lewis manages to rescue the only cat with expensive taste.” She set about hauling steak out of the fridge - kept in the pantry at the back of the house, where she made sure to only venture when strictly necessary, to keep her magic from blowing the circuits - and wandered back to the kitchen. 

The evening light was starting to fade, and she waved a hand absentmindedly over her shoulder, causing several candles to burst into flame, and one potted geranium. 

“Stop looking at me like that.” She grumbled. “I know, I know.” Darcy put it out with a hastily conjured raincloud, the steam momentarily fogging the kitchen and making her choke a little. The cat stalked its way across the tabletop, knocking aside her herbs. Darcy flicked at it with a dishcloth, and it stared at her with a look that plainly told her exactly what it thought of her. 

“You know, you’re mean.” She said in response, and then wondered why she was talking to a goddamned cat. 

\------

“Okay, so I grant you that sunflowers are usually yellow and not blue, but it's definitely a flower.” Darcy said decidedly, and the cat looked at her, then the flower she’d just conjured, then back again. She could swear it shook its head.

Darcy looked at it suspiciously, then called over her shoulder to where her friend was curled up on the couch, reading some text-book she’d lugged over to Darcy’s house about quantum physics, a half-eaten sandwich lying forgotten on a plate balanced precariously on the arm. 

“Jane, quick question.”

“What's that?” Her friend said absentmindedly, turning another page and following the text across with one index finger. 

“You have a cat, right? Do you ever get the sense your cat is judging you?”

“That's what cats are like, Darce.” Jane laughed without looking up. 

“But this one… I dunno. I just get the feeling he's holding up mental scorecards or something.” Darcy frowned and gave her saucepan another stir. It bubbled nicely, and she thought even if flowers weren’t really her thing, at least she could make a good stew.

“And they're always really low scores, too.”

\-------

Somehow, they’d made it through a whole week before she found out. 

She’d woken, something odd she couldn’t quite place tugging at the corners of her mind in her sleep, to find a half-naked man sat at the bottom of her bed. Darcy yelled, and clutched her comforter to herself, thanking Hecate and all the rest of them that it was Fall and she was wearing pyjamas. 

What struck her next was the fact that she was the only one of the pair of them that seemed surprised by the situation. The rational part of her brain then piped up with the fact her cat - the cat, it corrected sharply, there was no way that thing could be said to belong to anyone - was no longer at the bottom of her bed. 

Precisely no longer in the spot where a dark-hair man looked back at her lazily. 

“Woah woah woah-” Darcy yelped, grabbing the nearest thing to hand which happened to be her hair brush. She thrust it in his direction, bringing her knees up to her chest. “What are you, a were-cat or something?”

He looked at the brush, then back up at her with a singularly unimpressed expression. If she'd been in any doubt at all that the half naked man now sprawled on her bed had previously been her cat, the look on his face would have clinched it. 

“There's no such thing as a were-cat.” 

“Uh, says the dude who just turned from a cat into a person.”

His voice was low and rasping, as though he wasn’t used to using it. Darcy held the hairbrush out towards him still, and it trembled and glowed in her hand, the magic causing it to glow white-hot and spark. 

He raised his hands in a lackadaisical show of deference, a glint in his eye telling her exactly what he thought of her show of strength. 

“Easy, Lewis,” He said, eyes flickering from the brush to her face with a crooked little half-smile creeping across his own. “No need for dramatics.”

“How do you know my name?” She demanded, and the brush sparked violently in her hand. His jaw dropped and he shook his head. 

“I’ve been living with you for the past week. I’m cursed, not stupid.” He said slowly. The hairbrush wavered a little in her hand, started to turn back to its normal bright purple colouring rather than the bright-white heat it had been glowing. She still kept it raised, however, and pointed firmly at him. 

“So you’re saying that someone turned you into a cat.” She said flatly. 

Blue eyes turned on her and his head tilted slightly as he gave her a once over. He was tall, that much she could tell even as he was stretched out over her bed, and he could do with a decent hair cut. His shaggy dark hair reached his shoulders, and she tore her eyes away from the broad muscles it brushed against. 

“You're a witch.” He retorted. “Supposedly. Haven't you heard of curses?”

She ignored the dig in favour of being the bigger person. “Yes, but that's…”

“What?”

“That's dark magic.”

“You’re telling me.” He said, rolling his eyes and propping his head on a folded arm, stretched out with an apparent lack of concern over the end of her bed. Darcy willed her eyes to remain on his, and not to travel across his abs. She was mildly grateful - she thought - that whoever had cursed him had managed to curse his pants as well, for they remained on. 

“So you turn back into a man every night?” She asked slowly.

“At the witching hour.” He said, eyes skittering across to the clock on her wall which showed the second hand ticking slowly past 3am. 

“The ‘tween time.” Darcy continued, thinking hard, and thankful that she had a problem to focus on rather than the way his chest and the lines of his abs were illuminated in the moonlight that streamed through her bedroom window. “Yeah, that makes sense. It's the time when spells are their weakest, especially transfiguration spells, because it's when the veil between this world and the next is stretched thinnest. Glamours are weaker. Easier to break.”

“So you can break this? Permanently?” He looked a little perkier as he spoke, sitting up with interest for the first time. Darcy hugged her knees to her chest and shrugged back at him, biting at her lower lip as she thought hard. 

“I don't know if I can turn you back permanently.” Darcy said, chewing on her lower lip. “I'm not all that great at magic.”

“Yeah, I noticed.” He said dryly.

“Mean.” She said, offended. She pushed the covers back and swung her legs out of the bed, bare feet hitting the hardwood floor. She tugged down her pyjama shirt with a glance at him out of the corner of her eye, though she found that he wasn’t actually looking in her direction. Darcy padded her way from her bedroom to the sitting room, and towards the grimoire sat upon its stand. 

“I don't suppose you happen to remember any of the words they used?” Darcy asked, flipping through her grimoire with a sinking feeling. The dark-haired stranger had followed her out, and dropped himself on her couch like he owned it. 

“Funnily enough, I was a little too busy being turned into a feline against my will.” He said sarcastically.

“I am actually trying to help you.” She snapped. “I've no obligation to, just like I didn't have to bring cat-you home and not leave you on the street in the rain.”

“Might have been better off.” He said under his breath, and Darcy flipped him the bird over her shoulder. 

“Not too late, sunshine.” She said, flipping more pages with a frown. 

It just wasn’t the sort of thing her family did. Cursing someone - well, that was dark magic and no mistake. Making someone do anything against their own will was just forbidden, at least in polite society. It wasn’t unheard of, and Darcy wasn’t a subscriber to the fairytale way of life, not least because they tended to paint her kind as the bad guys, but it still wasn’t anything she’d ever encountered before in her own world. 

“So any particular reason you got turned into a cat? Other than being the most irritating person around?” She asked, flippant now that he was behind her and she didn’t have to look at the sharp angles of his face and the way the stubble graced the edge of his chin like it was the final finish to a charcoal drawing. 

“I was no longer useful.” He said darkly. 

“Not surprised someone wanted to turn you into a cat.” She sniffed. “Anything to avoid having to look at your ugly mug.”

He laughed. “Doll, I am many things but ugly ain't one of ‘em.” Darcy made a noncommittal noise and didn't turn around, because unfortunately there were certain parts of her inclined to agree with him. Heartily.

“You gonna tell me your name? Seeing as you’ve been living in my house and eating my food.” Darcy asked, keeping her eyes on the yellow stained pages under her nose and decidedly not thinking on the fact that he’d also been sharing her bed the last five nights. 

There was a pause, and Darcy fought herself not to look over her shoulder at him. 

“Barnes. James Barnes.” Came the eventual response. 

“That your full name?” She asked curiously, twisting her body to look at him. He was sprawled on her couch, one arm bent behind his head, the other laying across his bare chest. She swallowed, hard, and hoped he didn’t notice. A certain glint in his eye suggested that he had. 

“Nope.” He said, tilting his head at her and rolling his tongue along his lower lip. Darcy looked away before she answered him, turning back to the grimoire and flicking a few more pages. 

“Good move.” Darcy managed, after a moment. “Free bit of advice, if someone with magic knows your full name, they can do nasty things to you.” 

“You ever heard the phrase ‘locking the barn door after the horse has bolted’?” He asked, with a roll of his eyes that she could well picture without even looking at him. “Or did that one miss the magical community?”

Darcy bit her lip and let the words she really wanted to say die on the edge of her tongue. It wouldn’t do any good, she told herself. Repeatedly. Instead she ran her finger over a spell she’d found from a 17th century Lewis. The spell suggested that she might be able to return a transfigured object to its original state. 

Object didn’t usually refer to person, but she figured it was worth a stab. 

“Hold still.” She said, turning back to him with a determined look on her face. Barnes swung his legs off the couch and arranged himself into a sitting position in front of her, face expectant. Darcy closed her eyes and chanted in her head, fingers twisting and turning in the air in front of her, emitting little blue sparks as she worked. 

She opened one eye as she finished, and found Barnes staring back at her, still human, still expectant. Her shoulders slumped. There had been no energy surge within her, the sure-fire sign that a spell had worked correctly. Darcy wrinkled her nose and his face fell, reading her like an open book. 

“Didn’t work then.” Barnes said grumpily. 

“We'll have to try at the next witching hour, when you're human again.” She said decidedly. 

“Why didn't it work?”

“I'm not a dark witch, Barnes.” She said, defensively, closing the grimoire on itself with a thud. “This might... Take a while.”

“Meantime I'm coughing up hairballs.” He said in disgust.

“If you don't like hairballs, pal, don't lick yourself.”

He threw her a dirty look at that, which she pointedly ignored. Crossing to the ottoman, Darcy hauled it open and dragged out blankets, chucking them onto the couch. Barnes said nothing, and she told herself she wasn’t actually aiming the pillows at him when she threw those across as well. 

Finished, she stood up and turned back to him, hands on hips. 

“Ground rules.” She said, pointing a finger at him. He raised an eyebrow. “Number one. You are not sleeping in my bed. That's just… Weird. Number two. You are not staying in the room with me when I get dressed or undressed.” She paused a moment. “Ditto the bathroom.”

“Who says I want to watch you get undressed?” He said lazily, and she flushed. 

“Just… Covering all bases.”


	2. The Next Nights

The witching hour ended at 4am on the dot, and Barnes - true to his word - turned back into a cat. 

Of course, it wasn’t quite as simple as that, and Darcy shut her eyes tight where she wasn’t able to shut her ears to the noise that accompanied it. Opening them reluctantly, one by one, after the commotion had ended, she found the calico cat staring back at her where Barnes had previously been sitting. 

“Holy mother of- Okay,” She said heavily, running a hand through her tangled curls and blinking down at him in the moonlight that streamed through the little window of her living room. “Maybe you get a pass for that attitude of yours. That did not sound fun at all.” 

The cat - Barnes, she reminded herself - did its level best to raise an eyebrow at her, and she grimaced in response. 

\-------

“What's your cat called again?” Jane asked, as she stepped through the front door and hugged Darcy hard, nearly hitting her in the face with the microscope she was carrying in one hand. The cat sat on the kitchen counter and yawned widely. 

“Satan.” Darcy answered easily, stealing a glance over her shoulder at him and then turning back to her friend. “That’s not electronic, right?” She said, pointing at the microscope and hoping to change the subject. Jane tilted her head at her as she drew back from the hug. 

“Huh?”

“Barnes.” Darcy said, with a false smile that ended before it reached her eyes. “His name is Barnes.”

“Unusual.” Jane said, looking at the cat curiously, before dumping the microscope and her shoulder bag on the kitchen table. 

“Well, he's pretty special.” Darcy said. “You know. In the head.”

\-------

“Hey Darcy, your cat really wants to come in the bedroom.” Jane giggled, and Darcy’s head popped up from where she’d dropped it moments before. She pushed herself into a standing position and followed her friend’s voice to her bedroom, where the cat was sitting on the threshold. 

Darcy frowned at him, and made a shooing movement. The cat - Barnes - remained where he was. 

Jane, laughing, shut the door on the pair of them - taking her shopping bag with her as she shouted out to Darcy that she was just going to try on this new pair of pants she’d picked up at the thrift store, and then she’d be looking for an honest opinion on the fit. 

“I am not above kicking you,” Darcy hissed sternly at Barnes, who looked back up at her impassively. “So don't push it.”

He yawned widely, and hopped up onto the sideboard in one easy leap. 

“Behave, or we can always go visit the vet so that Mr Fluffikins can be neutered.” She pointed a finger at his face. He fixed her with a look that blatantly said you-wouldn't.

“Try me, kitty.” She said, raising an eyebrow. “I'm a responsible pet owner.”

\-------

Darcy set herself a wake up spell for 3am, and yawned herself awake to the sound of Barnes turning back into himself in the living room. She pushed the door open hesitantly, to find him flat on his back on the floor, breathing hard, shaggy dark hair falling in his eyes as he panted. 

“Morning,” She said quietly, easing herself into the room and perching herself on the edge of the couch. “How’s it going?” Barnes, sitting up and flicking his hair out of his face, did not answer but glowered instead. Darcy took the hint, and sat herself at her desk instead, grimoire open and flicking the pages to find something appropriate.

Fifteen uncomfortable minutes passed, until Barnes cleared his throat from behind her and she jumped slightly, having forgotten he was there. 

“I might have something.” She said, twisting in the chair to face him, and he shrugged at her, as if to say lay-it-on-me. Darcy tapped the page in front of her, which detailed a spell from the 15th Century, apparently from Scotland, where her ancestors originally hailed from. Okay, so it wasn’t specifically related to transfiguration, or the reversal thereof, but she thought there might be something in it. 

It seemed that at least one of her ancestors had felt the need to create a do-over spell, for mistake correction, and Darcy at least felt comforted by the knowledge that she wasn’t the only fuck-up in her family. In fact, she thought to herself as she took a deep breath and prepared the spell in her head, the only real mystery was how she’d not managed to find this one before.

She could think of at least seven and a half times where it could have been very useful indeed. 

Darcy set her shoulders and took a breath, closing her eyes slightly and raising her hands. She concentrated, and then-

“Aren't you meant to say something?”

Darcy cracked an eye open and regarded the shirtless man sat on her couch. She blinked. 

“Like what?”

“I dunno.” He wrinkled his nose. “Bibbity bobbity boo?”

Darcy stared at him. “Bless you?”

Barnes shook his head. Darcy mirrored his movement, then raised a finger to her lips, silently begging him to be quiet and let her get on with it. Thankfully, he got the hint. She let her shoulders relax, and sank into the spell, visualising it in her mind before feeling the fizz of it spread out down her arms and to her outstretched fingers. 

She flicked first one wrist, then the other, sending blue sparks towards him. Barnes sat impassively on the couch, looking unruffled. Darcy shook her head, and pinched the bridge of her nose. 

“Guess it’s only good as do-over spell if it was you that made the mistake in the first place.” Darcy offered, and he glowered at her. She sighed and got up, shutting the grimoire and taking a quick glance at the clock on the wall. They had around half an hour of his time left, before he was back to chasing mice for another day. 

“Want something to eat?” She asked, turning back to him. 

\-------

“Disappointed you don't have a wand.” Barnes mumbled around a piece of toast before swallowing it down with a cold beer Darcy had cast a small freezing spell over as she passed it across to him. 

“Why would I have a wand?” She asked, from the other end of the table. She was also drinking beer and toast. It crossed her mind briefly that maybe it wasn’t really the most adult thing to be doing at quarter to four in the morning. 

Barnes shrugged. “For spells and shit.”

“Spells and shit.” She repeated flatly. “You already pissed off one witch, are you going for a home run or something?” Darcy rolled her eyes at him and took another slug of preternaturally chilled beer. Barnes tilted his own beer back and chased the last of it before answering. 

“Give me a break. I didn't know magic was real until all of this.”

“Magic is around you every day. Even if it's not this type of magic.” Darcy said, iding creating little smoke figures in the air that glowed with an eerie green light, as she spoke. “All your science, that's magic. I think that's why I don't get along with it. Too similar, yet different.”

Barnes regarded her a moment, then focused on the little figures that twisted in front of him, making little acrobatic moves and dancing their way over the tabletop for a minute or so before they faded away into nothingness. 

“You can’t be around anything modern?”

Darcy pursed her lips and looked at the beer bottle in front of her, fingers idly pulling at the wet label still just about clinging to the glass. “Nothing too modern, nothing relying too heavily on electronics. Hence the car.” She jerked a thumb behind her at the wall. “The clock runs on batteries, so it’s more or less okay. Sometimes it sparks though, if I do too much magic around it.”

The man at the other end of the table also glanced at the clock, no doubt noting that his time as a human was steadily ticking away. He fixed her with a curious look before speaking again. “So you've never been to a movie?”

Darcy wrinkled her nose. “Uh, well, once. When I was a kid.”

“What happened?”

“The projector broke.” She admitted. 

“That's not necessarily you, though, they break all the time-”

“It burst into flames, the film reel burned up and then the sprinkler systems came on and the whole multiplex was evacuated.” She muttered, and he fell silent.

“Okay. That - that might have been you.”

The clock ticked forward, and Barnes choked slightly, sending the green bottle skittering across the table. He bent double, grimacing, and Darcy threw a wild look at the clock, noting that it was about to strike 4am. Barnes’ hand hit the table and clenched into a fist, and she stood up, not sure what to do. 

“Just go.” He bit out, body starting to shake. Darcy hesitated, and he practically growled at her to leave. She moved to the door and, hovering on the threshold, looked back at him as he slipped from the chair to hit the floor knees first. 

“Tomorrow. We’ll find something tomorrow.”

Lying awake in her bed, staring up at the ceiling, she hoped she was able to follow through on that promise. 

\------

The next night - or morning, dependant on how one chose to look at it, was a wash-out. Darcy felt as though she’d read the grimoire cover to cover, and was still coming up with nothing much. She huffed to herself, and flipped another page, just incase a spell turned up that she’d somehow missed before. 

Barnes was stretched out on the couch, idly throwing a ball into the air and catching it easily, legs crossed at the ankles and resting on the arm of the couch. She twisted in her chair and regarded him. “You could stand to be a little more cat-like, you know.” She observed. “For when Jane comes over.”

“How do you suggest exactly I be more cat like?” He asked testily. Darcy shrugged in response.

“I don't know. I'm not really a cat person.”

“I thought witches were the ultimate cat people?” Barnes asked, snatching the ball out of the air in one hand and turning to gaze back at her, one eyebrow raised and his dark hair falling over his face slightly as he moved. 

“Jeez, who are you, my mother? Yes, witches are the ultimate cat people. Just another tick on the long list of ways Darcy Lewis is a disappointment to her illustrious heritage.” Darcy rolled her eyes, thinking of her mother who so often looked at her daughter with what amounted to bewilderment. Like she couldn’t quite figure out how it was that she’d managed to produce a girl like Darcy. 

“Why'd you bring me home if you don't like cats?” Barnes asked from the couch. 

“Believe me, I am asking myself the same question every day.” She muttered, turning back to the grimoire again with a heavy sigh, pushing a hand through tangled curls as she twisted in the chair. “It was an out of character burst of altruism that shall not be repeated.”

\-------

“Hey, I think I have something here-” Darcy said excitedly, turning to Barnes who was sat at the kitchen table, slugging back a beer and his feet crossed and on the table. He raised an eyebrow at her, and it occurred to her that it was becoming a dirty habit. Rising from the chair, she shooed his feet off the table so that he was sat properly. 

“Okay, so this is a spell from 1886, and technically it’s alchemy if you want to get down to brass tacks about it, but I figured, it’s all transfiguration, right?” She said brightly, slamming the grimoire down on the table. Barnes looked at the book, then back up at her. She sighed.

“Look-” She held the spell in her mind, twisting it and setting it to work, then flicked her wrist at the pepper pot, which shook abruptly and then - with a loud popping sound - turned into a teapot. Darcy turned back to him, beaming, and Barnes shrugged. 

“Just, hold still…” She repeated the movements, and felt the burst of energy she was expecting erupt out of her and barrell towards him, like a strong wind blowing across from herself to the man at her kitchen table. 

“Did it work?” He said hopefully.

Darcy peeped one eye open from where she’d shut them tight, and looked at him. “Dunno. Felt like something changed. Guess we won't know until your hour is up.”

She fell asleep waiting at the table, slipping so easily into dreams that she didn't realise she'd dropped into sleep. Barnes, one eye on the clock, scooped her easily and deposited her into her bed. He paused, looking down at her, then pulled the cover over her shoulders. 

Darcy awoke with a start as the sun crept through the window of her bedroom, sitting upright in her bed - not entirely clear on how she’d managed to get there - slipped out of bed and promptly fell over the dog laid out on the rug next to her bed. 

The dog, a Husky type, stared balefully back at her. Darcy groaned, sprawled over the floor.

“Oh, I am not going to like it when you can speak again.” The dog barked in agreement. “At least I can take you for walks now and it won't be weird.” Darcy offered. The dog frowned at her. 

\-------

“You turned me into a dog.” He said accusingly, at five past three the next morning, when his skeleton has turned itself inside out and back into a human one again. Darcy had put her fingers in her ears this time. 

“Well that's one way of looking at it.” Darcy said. Barnes stared at her. “You're not a cat anymore, so that's progress. Right?” She said weakly.

“I don't like your definition of progress, Lewis.”

“Hey, a dog is a whole different species to a cat.” She said, slightly offended.

“Yes. Much like a human to a cat.” He pointed out, running a frustrated hand through his shaggy dark hair. 

“Yeah, well. Humans are pretty complex beings. Even one like you.” Darcy said, snappishly. She crossed to the kitchen and, pulling two glasses from the cupboard over the sink, conjured pink lemonade, one of which she passed silently to Barnes. 

“I’ve exhausted the grimoire.” She said quietly, still standing at the sink and not looking back at him. From behind her, she could hear his breath catch in his throat before he swallowed hard and attempted to answer her. 

“Now what?” He asked, voice low and lacking much hope. 

“Now I hit the library.” Darcy said, with a false sense of brightness forced into her voice, spinning on her heel to face him. He looked unconvinced. 

“You think you can find stuff about this-” He waved a hand at himself. “-in the library?”

“Please, it's New York.” Darcy said, with more conviction than she necessarily felt. She took a swig of lemonade and felt it fizzle across her tongue. “Anyway, who do you think keeps libraries going in this day and age?” She pointed out. “Not the set who can't pick up a Kindle without it exploding.”

Barnes frowned, but said nothing. 

“Plus, the one I'm thinking of, always open. Which means-”

“I'm coming with you.”

“Damn straight. You can participate in your own rescue, princess.”


	3. The Library

“If magic is such a problem, why don't you just get a bicycle?” Barnes said, arms folded and watching her pore over the latest edition of Idiot’s Guide to Car Maintenance. Darcy hummed, spinning a wrench absentmindedly in one hand as she leaned against the car, its hood popped open. 

“But then it would be so much harder for me to bring home angry stray cats that turn out to be angry stray men.” She answered, turning to him with wide eyes. She’d bundled outside to the car, only for it to begin smoking furiously as soon as she’d turned the key in the ignition. Darcy turned back to the car and chewed on her lower lip, deep in thought. If the pistons on the crankshaft were misaligned, then she just needed to re-adjust them and then that ought to-

“I can fix that, you know.” He said from behind her, arms crossed and leaning against the doorframe as he watched her bend over the car in the driveway.

“I can fix you.” She mumbled under her breath, not looking back at him and bending further into the car, poking experimentally with the wrench and fighting hard not to let any magic fizz out from her fingertips. “Doubt you'd like it though.”

“I can hear you. You're not as quiet as you think you are. And I'm good with cars.”

“Guess you had to be good at something other than sarcasm.” She said, pointedly, still not looking up. Barnes ignored her. 

“Move over. You've only got-” He checked the clock, leaning from the open doorway into the little house and squinting at the clock in the living room. “-38 minutes left of human me, might as well make the most of it.”

“Huh.” Darcy said, as he proceeded to push her out of the way and arranged himself in front of the car, peering into the depths of the engine. “Guess that's what you say to all the girls.”

“I can go for longer than 38 minutes when I'm allowed to, don't you worry on that.” Barnes retorted, head disappearing under the open hood of her car. Darcy, finding her cheeks a little hot, cleared her throat and didn't answer immediately. The light of the moon played over the muscles on his back as he stretched forward, and suddenly her throat felt dry. 

“Do you, uh, want some lemonade or something?” She managed, shoving her hands into her jean pocket in an effort to find something to do with them. An answering snort came from the car. 

“Beer would be better received.” 

\------

“What-what is that?” Barnes asked, tipping his head to one side in confusion, wiping oil off his hands with the remains of what had once been her favourite t-shirt, and had been relegated in recent years to one she kept tucked in the back seat pocket of the car for just such an occasion. He was looking up at the side of the house.

“Sun dial-” She flicked a finger behind her, knowing what he was looking at without having to turn, and the instrument glowed. “And moon dial.” The other flared brightly for a moment as well, before fading.

“You're practically medieval.” He said, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “How does it work?” Darcy turned around, resting her ass on the hood of the car and gazing up at the side of the house. 

“The moon dial? It's technically only accurate at full moon, but then again when you can conjure your own moonlight, the point is moot.” She twisted her hand in a complicated little pattern, and between her fingers shaped a small glowing orb that she floated up towards the dial. “See?”

 

Barnes raised an eyebrow as the orb rested in front of the moondial, making it glow with a soft but unnatural light. 

“I know you're impressed.” Darcy grinned. “You don't have to say it.”

“I'll be impressed when you fix this curse, and not before.” Barnes answered, and she rolled her eyes, turning away from him again and missing the small smile that crossed his face as he looked at her.Darcy finished up with the car, locking it - manually, she’d tried one with remote central locking once, and learned that lesson abruptly - and headed back into the cottage. 

Bucky followed, heading for the living room. Folding his arms, he leaned against the door frame and looked back into the other room, letting his gaze roll over her for a moment, taking in the way her head tilted as she fussed around the kitchen. Little blue sparks trailed after her as she worked. 

 

“So, the car’s fixed-” She started. 

“You're welcome.” 

“-but we are out of time for tonight.” Darcy finished. “And I would have fixed it eventually.”

“Not if you thought it was the pistons causing the problem.” Barnes said flatly. “Tomorrow, then.” He turned away from her and dropped himself on the couch, face turned and eyes watching the last minutes tick away of his hour. 

Darcy hovered at the door frame, watching him as long as she dared before escaping to her bedroom.

\------

“What happened to your cat?” Jane asked, after tripping over the large husky dog sprawled across Darcy’s kitchen floor when she arrived. 

“Gonna need to be more specific.” Darcy said, back turned and working over a pot of stew. Her fingers twitched and the spoon stirred fasted as she furrowed her brow looking at the recipe in front of her. Her head tilted. “You think stew should be yellow?”

“You don't appear to have one anymore.” Jane said patiently, stripping out of her coat and hanging it on the floating peg that appeared before her, used to both the oddities of Darcy’s house, and her erratic train of thought. 

“Oh.” Darcy said, thinking quickly and deliberately not turning around to face her friend. “He, um, ran away. You know what cats are like. Lone... Wolves.” 

 

“Uhuh.” Jane replied, slipping into the one chair at the kitchen table that didn’t already have things stacked precariously upon it, and taking a sip of the coffee that had poured itself for her. “And the dog?”

“Um.” Even the spoon stirring Darcy’s ambiguously coloured stew paused as she thought. “He is also a stray. That I found. And am looking after.” She turned on her heel to face Jane and beamed, arms wide open. “I’m like the Mother Theresa of animals!”

“Right.” Jane laughed, shaking her head and draining half the coffee in one. “What’s his name?”

“Barnes.” Darcy answered without thinking, and the dog tilted his head to one side in a manner that told her exactly what he was thinking. She thought two things - firstly, that it was just as well that he couldn’t speak at that moment, and secondly that she probably deserved what he was thinking. The other girl glanced at the dog, then back at Darcy and opened her mouth.

She shrugged and rushed on before Jane could comment. “Eh, it’s easier. Call ‘em all the same, then you won’t forget it, right? You know, I knew a girl in high school who only dated guys called Kevin for that very reason.” Jane shook her head, laughing again, and excused herself to the bathroom. 

Darcy slumped against the stove and put her head in her hands. From the other side of the kitchen, Barnes barked. 

“I didn’t know a dog could bark sarcastically.” Darcy said to him, hands on hips. “Congratulations, you’ve discovered something entirely unique. Be proud of yourself, Barnes.”

\-------

“Wait.” Darcy said, putting a hand out to bar his way. The next night - morning - had dawned, and she was shrugging on a jacket before she turned to look at Barnes properly. “You can't go out like that.”

“Like what?” Barnes huffed in response, leaning forward into her arm and glowering down at her. “C’mon, Lewis, clock’s ticking.”

“You're only wearing pants.” She said, gesturing at him. He looked down at himself, and then back up towards her. 

“I don't usually get complaints.” Barnes said, with a wink. Darcy sighed and rolled her eyes. 

“Okay, I get that you've probably never been in one before, but the library is not a club. No shirt, no service - c’mon.” She tugged him back into the living room. 

 

\------

“What is it? 

Barnes looked down suspiciously at what she’d shoved at him, turning it over in his hands. 

“It's a shirt. Are you not acquainted with the concept?” Darcy answered tartly from the doorway, her arms folded across her chest and one foot tapping impatiently. He pursed his lips. 

“Alright then - whose is it?” Barnes asked, as he shook the shirt out and reeled back slightly looking at it properly. The logo proclaimed loudly that the owner of the shirt was a ‘certified-G’. 

She coloured slightly, but met his eyes anyway. “My boyfriend’s.” He raised an eyebrow as she stumbled on. “Ex-boyfriend. Just put the damn shirt on.” 

“This is-” he huffed as he wriggled into it, twisting and contorting himself as he worked it over his shoulder awkwardly. “You think this is better?” His head popped through, hair dishevelled, panting slightly. “It's so tight it's practically painted on. Who the hell did you date? One of the seven dwarves?”

“Ironic considering you're making a great play for the role of Grumpy. Listen, I've not got a lot of choice for you.” Darcy snapped back at him, losing patience. “Anything of mine will be even smaller, so suck it.”

“You're a witch.” He said, with a pained expression, and Darcy rolled her eyes. 

“Yeah, but I've got to have something to work with. Law of balances, Barnes, you don't get something from nothing. Hold still.” He cringed away from her, squeezing his eyes shut with a grimace, and she lowered her hands at the tense set of his shoulders. 

“What's the problem?”

“I'm not exactly overjoyed about magic, given what happened the last time a witch raised a hand to me. And all you’ve managed to do so far is turn me into a dog.” He muttered, almost under his breath, and pulled at the hem of the shirt which ended a good inch or so above the waist of his pants. “Why do I have to be wearing it?”

“So I can size it right.” She said, with more patience than she felt at that moment. “Look-” Darcy put one hand out tentatively against his own, fingertips brushing over his lightly. “I'm not going to hurt you, promise.”

She nodded at him and unthinkingly grasped his hand tighter. Barnes’ eyes flickered to where she was holding his hand, then back up to her face. He nodded back, jaw tight and a muscle twitching in his cheek. The girl pulled back, letting go of his hand and he felt the absence of her warmth keenly, before he shook the feeling away. 

Darcy fought to keep her hand movements to a minimum, only twisting as much as strictly necessary to get the spell done. There had been a flash of something far more human in him when he’d admitted his fear to her than she’d seen in him before, and it tugged at her. 

“Better?”

Barnes opened his eyes from where he'd squeezed them tight shut subconsciously, and wriggled his shoulders. “Fits better.” He admitted, smoothing his hands over the material which hung looser against his body than it had, then looked down and yelped.

“What's wrong?” Darcy said with concern, stepping forward.

“It's pink.” He said, sounding injured.

“Yeah, that happens.” Darcy shrugged. “Not sure why exactly, it's kind of the magic equivalent of leaving a red sock in the wash. Most of my clothing spells wind up pink.”

“I am having second thoughts about you turning me back with success.” He said darkly. 

“You're mostly pink already. It'll be fine.”

\------

“This car is horrible.”

“I know.”

\------

“Hey Dolores.”

The large black woman sat behind the front desk lifted her head slightly, and smiled at Darcy. “Who's your friend?” She asked, eyes casting over Barnes appreciatively, even with his pink shirt.

“Just a friend from out of town.” Darcy answered, giving him a look over her shoulder that told him to keep quiet in no uncertain terms. “Is the transfiguration archive still in stack D?” Dolores nodded with a slow smile before turning back to the romance novel she had propped up on the desk, Darcy threw a grateful thanks towards the other woman and dragged Barnes along behind her.

“Why didn't you tell her?” Barnes said under his breath as he walked behind her, casting a glance back over his shoulder to where the woman was thoughtfully licking a finger before turning the page of her book. The man on the front cover was broad-chested, blond and had what the blurb on the back would no doubt describe as a twinkle of danger in his eye. Barnes winced and turned back to Darcy. “Maybe she could help.”

“It's not something you want to advertise.” Darcy said quietly. “Just in case.”

“You don't trust her?” Barnes asked, looking back once more. 

“Best not to trust anyone. Not with stuff like this.” She said darkly. 

 

\-------

“So witches keep public libraries going.” He said, staring around them at the huge glass dome that towered overhead. The stacks rose up around them, filled with an impossible amount of books; new, old, dusty and well-read. Barnes wasn’t sure he had ever been in a library before, but he thought probably the section that Darcy had taken him to wouldn’t have been open to the casual reader anyway. 

“Well, a lot of them.” Darcy said absentmindedly, flicking through the card catalogue and frowning slightly. “It's sort of a heritage thing.” She paused, thinking as she spoke again. “And maybe a certain amount of atonement.” She shrugged as she looked back at him. “The fire at the great library of Alexandria? Not exactly a knocked candle.” 

She pulled out a card and grinned broadly, having evidently found what she wanted. She turned back to him clutching at it, gesturing to him to follow her as she disappeared in between the towering columns of books that arched up around them. Barnes followed, keeping a half-pace behind her as she continued to chatter at him. 

“There's a reason newspapers are still printed as well, you know.”

“You're telling me Rupert Murdoch is a witch?” Barnes asked.

“Please.” Darcy snorted over her shoulder. “He's something inhuman but he's not magic.”

\-------

“What about the triple witching hour? That sounds promising.” He said, looking up at her from the book he’d pulled off the shelf. They’d camped out at a small table, all dark wood and leather bound chairs. Barnes felt as though he’d slipped back in time as well as into another body. “Extra witchy.”

“Dunno. Were you cursed by an investment banker?” Darcy answered, hauling another book down from the shelves in front of her and dropping it onto the table with a thump. “Because that has nothing to do with magic.”

Barnes shut the book with a sigh and dropped it onto a pile of books they’d checked and ultimately discarded. He flicked an eye towards the clock, which was steadily ticking towards 4am and his return to canine form. Darcy, cross-legged on the floor, was thumbing her way through two books at once, both of them hovering in front of her face as she waved a hand over each, the pages turning on command. 

The candlelight threw her face into sharp illumination, and he caught himself looking longer at her than he meant to. Barnes shook himself. He needed to find a way back into his own body, permanently, and this girl was his best hope. That was it, he told himself. Nothing else. 

Darcy stiffened, the pages ceasing ruffling as she leaned forward with an index finger jabbing at the page in the book to her right. Her nose practically pressed against it, she let out a small breath of excitement and looked up at him with shining eyes. 

“All Hallows' Eve.” She said excitedly, jabbing at the book again. “That's it!”

“Halloween?” Barnes said doubtfully. “You wanna dress up as a witch, see if it sticks?”

“It's the point at which the veil is at its absolute thinnest. If it doesn't work then...”

“Then I'll always be a dog.” He finished, catching the awkward look on her face and putting her out of her misery in trying to finish that sentence. 

“It'll work.” She said with more confidence than she really felt. “You'll just have to put up with me for another month before we try again.”


	4. The Final Spell

Darcy shut the book with a thump, and sat back in her chair at the kitchen table, chewing her lower lip. The husky dog nudged at her hand with his nose, and when that failed to get a reaction from the little brunette, he placed a large paw on her leg.

They’d made it back to her car, at least, before Barnes howled in agony and his body twisted in on itself. She’d closed her eyes and put her hands over her ears as he threw himself onto the backseat, and she’d only taken them away when the little car had stopped shaking around her. 

Glancing in the rear view mirror, she’d found the large husky staring balefully back at her, tongue hanging out as he panted furiously and an overstretched pink t-shirt twisted around his body. After extracting it from him - or what was left of it after he’d made his transformation. 

“Hey, I know you didn’t like the colour, but there was no need to rip it to pieces.” It was a weak joke that did nothing to lighten the situation, and she was rightfully dismissed as he lay down fully on the backseat and turned his head away from her, resting it on his paws. 

“I need to know your full name.” She said quietly, returning to the present and looking down at the huge paw resting on her leg, unable to look at him properly. “And I know that’s a big ask. Believe me, I know what that means, how much trust it needs. But I don’t think it’ll work without it.”

The husky brought his chin to rest on her thigh alongside his paw, and woofed gently. Darcy managed a small smile, lips twisting cautiously. It was no small thing for a witch to ask someone’s name, the power that was handed over was phenomenal. Not that Darcy was the type of witch - or indeed person - to do any harm, at least not intentionally, but it still remained an important issue of trust. 

“You’ll bite me if I pet your ears, won’t you?”

\--------

“How do you live without technology?” Barnes asked, lounging in a chair at the kitchen table and watching as Darcy squinted at a cookbook, floating as usual in front of her face. It followed her as she moved about the small kitchen, bumping into her shoulder when she stopped to grab another pot of spices. 

She’d become somewhat nocturnal, catering for Barnes’ witching hour needs. Her alarm spell was permanently set for 2:55am, along with another spell that robbed her temporarily of her ability to hear, as the dog sprawled across her living room rug yipped and howled his way back into a man. 

“Well firstly, I'm a witch.” Darcy pointed out, popping the cap on a pot of herbs and sniffing hard. She looked at it critically. It smelled like rosemary, but it was labelled basil. She sighed and turned back to where Barnes was watching her, waiting on an answer. “So it's not like I'm hand churning butter here. But plenty of people live without being glued to the television or a computer screen.”

“Not many.” Barnes snorted, hands idly fiddling with the beer bottle in front of him. The label was wet and starting to peel, and his busy fingers helped it along, shredding it onto the tablecloth. Darcy frowned and flicked a finger, the scraps disappeared in a burst of purple light. He tossed her an injured look. 

“Well maybe more of them should try it sometime.” The little brunette said, pointedly. “There’s a whole world out there, just waiting to be explored. Nature is a wonderful thing.” She moved back to the pot on the stove, stirring itself frantically, and tipped the little pot of herbs over it liberally. 

“Don’t you ever want to see a movie?” Barnes asked quietly from behind her, and Darcy sighed, tipping her head to one side so that her hair fell across her face. She shoved it back behind her ear impatiently. “Without it burning up in front of your face?”

“Can't miss what you never had, can you?”

\--------

“Darcy, I need to come in-” 

The voice - tired, slow - accompanied the knocking at the front door. Both Darcy and Barnes looked at each other, then at the clock on the wall. 

“Jane?” Darcy answered, moving to the door and opening it slightly, trying to angle her body into the gap she’d left so that Barnes wasn’t visible to the other girl. She winced looking at Jane, who was swaying slightly on her feet. “It’s like, 3am in the morning. What’s wrong?”

“I had a breakthrough.” The sleep-deprived girl on the other side of the door supplied, and there was a hint of triumph amidst the exhaustion that fuelled it. Darcy smiled, despite herself. Jane had been working for a long time, in the solid and firmly held belief that she’d hit upon the right theory, and just needed to find the appropriate evidence to support it. 

“That’s great, Jane.” Darcy said, her voice soft and her hands on the wooden door. “Do I even wanna know how many sleepless nights you’ve had in order to get that breakthrough?”

“Nuh-uh.” Jane shook her head violently. “And don’t tell my mom, either. Can I come in?”

“Uh-” Darcy said, throwing a concerned glance back over her shoulder at Barnes, who was still very much man-shaped, and would remain that way for the next half hour. Jane had already shoved at the door and slipped through gap as Darcy lost focus on her, and stumbled her way into the only free chair at the kitchen table. 

“You want a drink?” Darcy said brightly, shutting the door and shooting Barnes a look that told him to keep quiet. He remained frozen in the other free chair. “Not coffee.” She said firmly, as Jane opened her mouth. 

The other girl smiled sleepily and shrugged her shoulders. “Hot chocolate it is.”

Darcy’s hands conjured small yellow sparks, trailing around her moving fingers like fairy dust, and mugs popped onto the table, disappearing from the shelves behind her head. A saucepan appeared on the stove, merry yellow flames bursting into existence underneath it as Darcy conjured milk and cocoa powder. The milk poured itself with a splash into the pan, and the cocoa powder liberally added teaspoons to the liquid bubbling within it. 

Barnes looked at Darcy over Jane’s head, slumped sleepily on folded arms at the table. Darcy shrugged back at him, then nudged Jane for her drink. The brunette took it, eyes closing even further in happiness as she sipped. 

“Darce?” Jane mumbled around the lip of the mug. “Can I stay here tonight? M’too tired to drive.” Barnes shook his head wildly from the other side of the table and gestured toward the clock on the wall, carefully ticking its way closer to 4am. Darcy put her hands up in a what-can-I-do response, and turned her attention to Jane. 

“Yeah, of course-” Barnes made a throttling motion. “-You can take my room, I’ll sleep on the couch.” Jane managed a smile, gazing up at Darcy from sleep-deprived eyes and slurped the last of her hot chocolate, leaving a dark stain of cocoa up the side of the mug. 

“Okay, bedtime for little scientists.” Darcy chuckled, and looped an arm around Jane, helping the other girl to her feet. She stumbled, tripping over feet too tired to listen to what was being asked of them, and fell forward slightly, catching herself with a hand flung out that grasped at a chairback. 

Barnes’ chairback. 

He froze. Darcy froze. 

Jane giggled. 

“Good doggy.” She said absentmindedly, patting his head as she turned her own towards Darcy, still propping her upright. The little witch, for her part, bit down hard on her lower lip in a concerted effort not to laugh out loud at the look on Barnes’ face as Jane ruffled his hair. 

“Okay, into the bedroom we go,” Darcy chanted, hauling at Jane and staggering with her across the living room floor towards the door. 

\---------

“She thought I was a dog.” Barnes said incredulously. 

“She was tired.” Darcy replied, hauling out blankets from the ottoman and throwing them into the air behind her, where they unfolded and settled themselves across the couch carefully. “And you do have a waggly tail.”

A throw pillow hit her square in the back of the head and she straightened instantly, looking back at where he was grinning at her, lounged on the floor and propped up on bended elbows. Darcy put her hands on her hips. 

“Really?” She asked. “You want to play that with a witch?”

Three throw cushions and a stuffed bear thudded into him, knocking him flat amongst the blankets he’d arranged around himself. Barnes laughed, and aimed another at Darcy, pulling his arm back at the last moment as it trembled and shook. 

They both glanced at the clock, which was just starting to strike 4am. 

“I sealed the bedroom.” Darcy said quickly. “She won’t hear a thing.”

“You will.” Barnes grunted, curling in on himself as his body started to shake. He panted hard and grit his teeth as he looked up at her from the floor. 

“Getting used to it.” Darcy said quietly, wishing there was something she could do to help. As it was, she sank back into the couch and drew the blankets up around her, swaddling her ears and closing her eyes as she muttered a noise-cancelling charm to herself under her breath. 

When she woke in the morning, Barnes was sprawled on the floor, back nestled against the bottom of the couch and paws tangled in the blankets. Darcy drew back quickly, swallowing hard as she realised she’d had a hand dangled over the side of couch and resting against his side. 

She ran that same hand through tangled curls and eased herself off the couch, carefully stepping over him so that she could go and deal with Jane. 

\---------

“Look, I don’t know quite how to say this, but I’ll just say it anyway.” Darcy said, rushing her words and looking anywhere but at him. Barnes inclined his head, intrigued. “You’ve been wearing those pants for I don’t know how long; if you take them off I’ll wash them for you.”

Barnes’ mouth gaped open for a moment, then he collected himself, shrugged and started to unzip them.

“Wait, wait-“ Darcy turned her back on him, cheeks flushing. “Jeez, Barnes, did your sense of decorum get zapped as well as your ability to stand on two legs?” A pair of pants thumped onto the floor beside her in response, and she looked down at them, only to find a pair of boxers joining the pile. Darcy put her hand over her eyes, and turned slowly.

“Maybe you should have a bath, too.” She suggested, perfectly able to picture him grinning back at her.

“You are just desperate to get these pants off and keep ‘em off, aren’t you Lewis?” Barnes said, and she could hear the grin in his voice as he spoke. She rolled her eyes, and then realised that he couldn’t see them behind her hand and sighed.

“Desperate to reduce the smells around here, and you’ve reached the point where Febreeze isn’t cutting it anymore.” She said shortly, turning her back on him again and grabbing up his clothes.

\--------

“The Witches?” She looked up at him as he slid a flyer across the table toward her. The bright paper informed her that the local park would be shortly playing host to an outside cinema experience. Patrons were welcome to bring picnics and blankets. 

“It’s all that’s playing.” Barnes said. Darcy noted there were teeth marks in the flyer, and realised that he’d disappeared in the afternoon without a word. Well, without a woof, at least. 

“Uhuh. I definitely believe you.” She said, looking up from the flyer with her best attempt at an unamused expression. 

“Just go. You'll like it.” He said, leaning back in the kitchen chair with his hands clasped in his lap and legs stretched out. He liked to stretch out as much as possible, when he was human. Barnes was tall, six foot and change, and he seemed to relish the chance to take up space. 

Darcy hesitated, fingers rolling the edge of the flyer, blue eyes falling a little blank in the moonlight as she lost herself in thought. “What if…” She trailed off, twisting the flyer in her hands. Barnes raised an eyebrow and motioned for her to continue. “What if I break it?”

“You won't break it.” He said firmly, sniffing and standing up, moving to stand and look out into the small garden. The moonlight broke through the treeline, illuminating the small allotment that Darcy tended to each day. 

“You don't know that.” She said hotly, to the line of his back as it faced her. 

“It's outside, you can sit as far back as you need to, and it's a basic projector they're using.” Barnes said without turning, voice just as firm as her own, brooking no argument. Hearing nothing more from her, he twisted on his heel and looked at her properly. 

She still looked unconvinced. 

“Just go, Lewis.”

\-------

“David Copperfield.” 

Barnes called from the living room, sprawled over the couch and flicking idly through a magazine that Jane had left some months before. 

“Not a witch. Lots of mirror work.” 

Darcy shouted back, getting out of the tub gingerly and letting her bath towel wind its way around her as she stood dripping on the bathmat. 

“That British fella. Derren Brown.”

“Full on Faustian-pact.” 

Darcy said sagely from her position in front of her bathroom mirror. She frowned at her reflection, which frowned right back - then smiled. Darcy rolled her eyes and picked up her hairbrush, dragging it through her curls. “The devil is coming for that sucker, and it’ll be some day soon.”

\------

Darcy picked a spot as far back as she could, practically under the tree line, and laid out her picnic blanket. 

“Hey,” she said softly, raising her hand as the large husky dog padded stealthily across the grass towards her from the trees. “Now I'm the crazy lady who brought her dog to an outside cinema.” She said dryly, and Barnes tilted his head to one side. “Technically I'm the crazy lady whose dog turned up an hour late to the outside cinema, so maybe I should just quit whilst I'm ahead, huh?”

Barnes pressed a paw to the back of her hand, then knocked his shoulder firmly into hers, and she rolled her eyes. 

“Alright, alright.” Darcy grumbled. “You were right, so far. It hasn’t blown up yet. Want some chips?”

 

\--------

“What's your story, James Barnes?” She asked. They were sat in the tiny garden at the side of Darcy’s house, sharing a beer or two in anticipation of the following night. All Hallow’s Eve. Darcy was also taking the opportunity to cast some wards around the cottage, so that they’d be sure of no interruptions. 

Barnes had snorted, told her it was unlikely that she’d get trick-or-treaters at past 3am. Darcy had muttered darkly that you just never knew. Even if it was only local kids tee-peeing the house. Again. 

“You wouldn't believe it if I told you.” He said with a smile, raising his half-empty bottle to his lips. Darcy pretended to herself that she wasn’t watching as he chased the condensation around the lip with his tongue before swallowing it down. 

“Girl who woke up with a man in her bed instead of a cat.” She pointed out, looking down at her own beer bottle and pulling at what was left of the damp label for something to do. “Try me.”

“Yes, you're the envy of single women everywhere.” He said, shaking his head, and she prodded him in the ribs with one extended foot. “Alright, alright.” He swatted her foot away, laughing slightly, and she retracted her limb. 

“I was born in 1917.” Barnes said, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. Darcy nodded, waiting for him to continue. He tilted his head at her. “That's not… That's not odd to you?”

“I mean, also gonna refer back to the previous comment about the were-cat thing, but no, not really.” Darcy responded, taking a long slow drag on her beer. Barnes’ eyes lingered as her throat worked, head tipped back, then fell away as she righted herself and looked him in the eye again. 

There was a pause. “How old are you, Darcy?”

“That's no question to ask a lady.” She snorted, conjuring two more bottles and then lazily twisting her fingers in a complicated pattern that brought a frosted chill to the outside of both. Barnes picked his up carefully, hissing through his teeth at the cold touch of it before responding. 

“When I see a lady, I'll remember that.”

She threw a grape at him, and he caught it easily in his mouth, laughing around it. “Charming.” She said, taking a grape for herself from the little bowl she had set on the table between them. “I see being born in more civilised times had little effect on your manners.”

“Lewis.” He was serious, for once, and she caught the look of it in his eye as she swapped her empty bottle for the new one she’d summoned. 

“I'm the age I appear to be.” She said slowly, bringing the bottle to her lips. Her fingertips played around the edges of the bottle and he realised, looking at her closely, that she wasn’t actually holding the bottle at all. Darcy’s eyes flickered towards his and he thought he caught something uncertain flash within them before she carried on. “But I'll remain that way for a while.”

“How long?” Barnes asked, curious.

“Dunno.” Darcy shrugged, pausing to swig back a mouthful of chilled beer. She played with the bottle, letting it float in front of her face, twisting from side to side and letting the liquid fizzle its bubbles up the inside of the glass as it moved. “Magic sort of… Preserves you. ‘Course, it can tip the other way, too. Using too much magic will kill you.”

“How much is too much?” Barnes felt something squeeze inside his chest at her words, and couldn’t - or wouldn’t - put a name to what that feeling was. 

“No one knows. That's what's dangerous about it.” She shrugged again. Her blue eyes caught the stars in them and, for a moment, they shone. For the first time, Barnes looked at her and realised that this girl, this little brunette who cursed under her breath and routinely forgot to add sugar when she was baking, was something otherworldly entirely. He blinked, realising that she was still talking. 

“There's been research, but it's kind of hard to know for sure, and people aren't exactly lining up to be test subjects.” Darcy laughed, draining the last of her beer and setting the bottle next to its empty brother, little green glass soldiers lined up on the table between them. “They think that everything has to have a little magic in, to stay alive. Like, it's the spark of life or something. So in magic people, like witches, we have more of it, like a surplus. So we can use it, bend it, make things with it.”

“But go too far-” Barnes supplied, furrowing his brow as he made the connections himself and considered the possibilities. 

“Exactly.” Darcy nodded, and snapped her fingers, conjuring a tiny explosion that boomed into a small mushroom cloud before disappearing. “You use up your magic, and that's it.”

“So a witch who never used magic at all… Could live forever?”

“That's the theory. Not sure why you'd want to, though.” 

 

\--------

The alarm spell buzzed softly, but she was already wide awake. Had not, in fact, even closed her eyes that night but instead had lain awake on top of her bedclothes, hands twisting above her head as she stared up at trail of patterns she was making. 

Darcy slipped off the bed and went to the door, listening intently as the sounds of Barnes’ transformation died away, and all she could hear was him panting as he lay prostrate on the floor. 

She pushed the door open cautiously, and peeped her head around. 

“Ready?”

\--------

“Lewis-“

“I’m working, I’m working-“ She said, frantically twisting her fingers and chanting under her breath. The man was stood opposite her, dark hair shaggy around his face and edged in the moonlight that lit the room. 

“Time’s running out.” He said, turning blue eyes on her that were bright with concern.

“It’s fine, it’s gonna be fine.” She said, more to herself than anyone else, and Barnes’ mouth snapped shut. Little red sparks collected around the ends of her fingers, shifting around them as she moved, like fairy dust tracking her movements. Barnes thought fleetingly that it was a beautiful thing to see.

Just before the room erupted into dark smoke and he disappeared from view. 

“Barnes?” Darcy said, hesitantly. Her chest was rising quickly, heart thumping against the inside of her rib cage with a rhythm that bounded faster and faster. She closed her eyes and reminded herself to breathe deeply. “Are you…You?”

The clock ticked, the echo of it sounding impossibly loud throughout the small room.

“I could kiss you.”

“Are you… Are you okay?” She said, choking a little on the smoke as it fanned out and spread through the air. She conjured a little wind spell and let it disperse the smog that threatened to take over the room. “Barnes?”

“Lewis.” He said from behind her, and she spun on the spot to find him grinning down at her. The clock ticked again, and they both turned to look at it. “Five past four.” Barnes murmured, and she nodded, transfixed by the time.

“I did it.” She said, amazed at herself.

“You did.” He agreed in a low voice, and his lips brushed her ear as he spoke. She shivered at the touch of it, and took a half-step back away from him. He looked down at himself, as though he were seeing his body for the first time. Like he was marvelling at it. 

Darcy bit on her lower lip and dragged her eyes away from where she might have been doing a little bit of marvelling herself. 

Barnes stared at his hands, bringing his palms up closer to his face, and laughed - a noise that split through the quiet of the room and had Darcy joining in as well, both of them a little hysterical. 

“Thank you.” He said, when he’d managed to get a hold on it, gazing down at her with a serious look that she didn’t think she’d ever really seen on his face before. Darcy gave him a one-shouldered shrug, accompanied by a gulp or two of nervous laughter. 

“Didn’t think I could do it.” She said, forcing a teasing tone into her voice and dropping her eyes from him once more. 

“Nope.” He said, frankly. “But you did.” 

Barnes took a step closer to her, then another, closed the gap between them until he was a bare inch or so away from her. Darcy tipped her head up, face half-hidden behind a curtain of dark curls, unsure what to say to him. He brushed back her hair, tucked it carefully behind her ear, and let his fingers rest against her cheek. 

Darcy’s heart pushed even faster, beating an uncomfortably loud rhythm that she thought he must be able to hear. 

Barnes opened his mouth as if to speak, pausing as he looked at her and ran his tongue along the edge of his lower lip before closing his mouth again. He leaned in toward her and brushed his lips softly over her cheek in a ghost of a kiss that, even at the light touch, had Darcy’s eyes closing. 

He drew back, and his hand dropped from her cheek. 

“Thank you.” Barnes said again, with a quirk of a smile that tugged at his mouth on just one side. 

\---------

“Hey, Darce? Darcy.” Jane leaned across the kitchen table and poked the other girl with the eraser tip of her pencil. Darcy started, having been stood staring out of the kitchen window into the garden for the past ten minutes, the stew she was ostensibly making stirring slower and slower as the flames under it flickered and faded. 

“Hmmmm?” She said, turning to her friend. Jane sighed. 

“What is with you?” The scientist said, rising from the chair where she’d been sitting, one leg tucked up underneath her and the other tapping an out of time rhythm on the wooden floorboards, sucking thoughtfully on the end of her pencil. 

She stood beside the little witch, leaning on one elbow against the counter and raising an eyebrow. “You’ve been spacey for like, a month.” Jane observed. “Even worse than me, and if I’m noticing…” She trailed off and they both laughed, both knowing that there was a twist of seriousness underlying Jane’s words. 

“Is it a spell or something?” Jane prompted, looking at her friend curiously. Darcy forced something akin to a smile on her face, a sad little shadow of a smile that didn’t fool either of them. 

“Something like that.” Darcy admitted, and reached out to grasp the ever slowing spoon, stirring it by hand instead. Jane watched her a moment, and seemed to realise that she wasn’t going to get anything else out of that line of questioning, at least not that day. She dropped back into her seat and flipped the page in her text book. 

“Say, Darce,” Jane said, suddenly looking up again. The witch glanced across at her, waiting for more. “Whatever happened to that dog?”

If Jane thought Darcy’s smile tightened a little, she said nothing. 

“Oh, he found a new home.” The brunette said, looking down at the stew and wrinkling her nose at the odd lumpy bits in it. “It was never anything permanent.”


	5. Epilogue

The year stretched into the longest days, and around her, the alarmingly small group of people that Darcy knew carried on. Thanksgiving came and went, a quiet affair with Jane finally tempted away from her laboratory by the promise of turkey and yams. The turkey was a little overdone, the yams a little undercooked, but they were together and that at least was enough.

Or, it was fair to say, Darcy told herself it was enough. 

December appeared and with it the jingling bells of the Christmas season. The little witch amused herself by decorating the cottage in garlands of green and gold, a wreath hanging from the front door and her Christmas tree dressed in its finest, taking over a little too much of the living room to allow for comfortable movement. 

Winter arrived, snarling and bitterly cold, snow drifts piling up the sidewalks and freezing the water pipes solid. Darcy took herself on a midnight walk three times a week, a knitted hat pulled low over her tangled curls and hands clad in fingerless gloves, the better for her to work warming spells around the neighbourhood. 

She passed the Cineplex each Saturday, carefully crossing the street to walk on the opposite side. One morning brought a special kids screening of The Witches. Darcy upturned her coat collar and ducked her head into her chest as she hurried past. 

The car broke down three times, the battery failing in the cold weather. Darcy coaxed and cajoled it through the first two incidents, but had to concede defeat at the last. Christmas Eve, she thought. And no jolly Saint Nick to offer me a ride home in his sleigh.

Leaving the car sadly in the empty parking lot at the grocers, with a promise to return as soon as she could find some willing tow truck company, she trudged home in the snow with her arms wrapped firmly around the brown paper shopping bags, barely able to see around them.

Her feet froze in her boots, and she stopped, dumping the bags on a snow covered bench with a furtive look about her person, before conjuring a warming spell that slowly spread from her toes to the tips of her fingers. Sighing happily, she fetched up the bags once more.

Darcy fumbled her way into the cottage, bags overflowing, muttering under her breath until they floated away from her and she could shut the door firmly. She kicked off her boots, leaving them on the doormat with laces falling loose and snow still stuck to them. With a sigh she turned back from the door and both bags promptly dropped to the tabletop with a thud as Darcy took in the figure sat at her kitchen table. 

Long legs stretched languidly and one arm rested on the back of the chair, the other lounging against the tabletop. Dark hair worn a little long, brushing over broad shoulders and a pair of blue eyes that sparkled even in the dark of the kitchen. 

James Barnes had returned

“What the hell are you doing here?” 

Every candle in the small cottage burst into flame at once as she spoke, stepping forward with fists clenched at her sides. 

“I came to-” 

“You left.” She said flatly, interrupting him. She was aware that she’d asked the question, but upon seeing his mouth open and him shaking back his dark hair as he did so, she realised she wasn’t really all that interested in the answer. “You took what you needed, and you left.”

“I took what I needed, but not all of it.” He said softly, getting to his feet, the chair scraping with a mournful whine against the flagstones as he pushed it backwards.

“What, you still change shape at full moon?” She sniffed, turning away from him, turning her back to him. Darcy worked her fingers furiously, for want of something else to focus on, and the shopping bags ripped themselves apart at the seams. 

“Got news for you if that's the case. Maybe you're just a dog.”

Her groceries tipped out of the ripped brown paper, tins and cans lining themselves up as if soldiers for an inspection, neatly along the kitchen table. They tottered and bounced their way across the floor, jumping down from the tabletop and skittering their way over the flagstones, finding their way between Darcy’s legs and nearly tripping up Barnes as he moved toward her. 

His hands came to either side of her, hesitant as he brushed one hand along her hip, and the other moved her hair carefully, exposing her shoulder and neck to him. Darcy stiffened under his touch, and the groceries moved faster, slamming into open cupboards and some that didn’t open quite quickly enough.

Barnes swallowed, and the hair on the back of her neck raised at the noise. 

“No.” He said, and his fingers made small circles over the bare skin of her shoulder. Darcy bit hard on her lower lip to keep from trembling under his light touch, and almost succeeded. 

“No, there's something else I need,” he said, voice low and head bowed towards her, breath warm in her ear. “Desperately.”

“Manners?” Darcy suggested, voice high. He huffed out a small laugh, and she shivered.

“Maybe two things,” he conceded. “But the first…” He trailed off, brushed her hair to the side again, and let his lips pressed together on her shoulder blade. Darcy held her breath and, encouraged by the fact she'd not hexed him into another species, Barnes made his way higher, little kisses one after the other until he reached her neck.

He kissed against the curve of her neck, just below her ear, and then drew back, his mouth just inches from her ear. 

“You.”

“Me.” Darcy said, and span on her heel to face him. 

A jar of preserve took a swan dive from one of the pantry shelves and smashed all over the kitchen floor, red jelly splattered across the stone like a fallen soldier. Barnes took a step back at the look on her face, and the way her hands were on her hips, though as it happened, not for long. 

“What. Exactly. Do. You. Think. You're. Playing. At-” she accompanied each staccato word with a jab to his chest. “Disappearing. And. Then. Pulling. This. Shit?” She advanced on him with each word too, and the steps that they took had him backed up all the way across the kitchen and into the living room until he was almost standing in the Christmas tree.

“I had to leave-” he protested, hands up in a show of deference and his blue eyes were wary. Catching sight of the expression on his face, Darcy took a breath and stepped back, realising that she was enveloped in a storm of red sparks, twisting and rolling their way around her body. She forced herself to breath, in, out, in, out, and walked her way back until her knees hit the couch. 

She sat down heavily, and the sparks winked out of existence. 

Darcy put her head in her hands, and pushed her mind into a blank space, concentrating only on her breathing. She started slightly when she felt a soft touch against her knee, and dropped her hands to find Barnes on his knees in front of her. One large hand was hovering on her knee, touching and yet not touching, the other had fingertips digging into his own thigh. 

“Shouldn’t you be running for the hills from this?” She sniped, feeling a flush of anger laced with confusion and not a small amount of sadness. “Doesn’t magic have you cowering?” 

Barnes let his hand drop fully onto her knee, and he gave it a cautious squeeze. Darcy’s eyes tripped their way towards his, meeting him with a little defiance but not - and he thought this a crucial aspect - moving away from his touch. 

“Magic scares the shit out of me,” he said frankly, a pair of deep blue eyes looking up at her with a seriousness that she’d never really seen in him before. Darcy shook herself mentally. Letting yourself think you knew a man who’d stuck around only as long as as he needed to was a pathway paved with broken hearts, and Darcy refused to be that girl. 

Barnes sighed, as if sensing her change in focus. He brought his free hand up to her other knee, shifting in front of her and sitting up a little. Still looking up at her, but his face much closer to her own. She could see herself reflected in his eyes, he was that close. The little lights that she’d carefully set into the Christmas tree, an appropriation of those she’d seen twinkling in the windows of other houses, flashed merrily behind him. 

“But not quite as much as you do.” He said, with a rueful grin.

Darcy stared at him. 

“Is this your twisted version of an apology? If I scare you so much, perhaps you’d better take the hint and leave,” Darcy snapped, pulling back from him and drawing her knees up into her chest, perching her feet on the edge of the couch and letting the bend of her legs form a barrier between them. She paused. 

“You’re good at leaving.” She added quietly, but in the silence that thundered in the little living room, she might as well have shouted it. 

Barnes sucked in a breath, and hung his head, hands having slipped from her knees when she’d moved back from him. He let them rest either side of her, digging his fingers into the couch cushions. 

He nodded his head, still bowed away from her, then raised it again, fixing her with a resigned look. 

“I am,” he agreed. “I am good at leaving. I left America for the war. I left my best friend to fight on without me. I left my memories behind. I left him again after he found me. I left him a third time after he fought for me.” The words tumbled from him, gaining speed as he spoke and Darcy didn’t follow most of it. Barnes caught himself and shook his head again, stilling the flow of words from his mouth. 

“And I left you.” 

He sat up, balancing on his knees, and leaned forward into her space, soft hands tugging her legs down from where they’d been bent in front of her, shielding her from him. They went reluctantly, but his movements were gentle, and he guided them down until she was bracketing his body. 

His hands stroked her thighs, and his eyes watched her carefully. Darcy swallowed, and forced her mind away from the thought that he looked like an angel fallen from heaven, his dark hair haloed in the soft candlelight that lit the small room. 

“And?” She said, voice tremulous as she spoke. 

“And I should have explained. Or tried to, at least,” Barnes said softly. He sighed, heavily, and one hand left her leg to push his head back from his face. Darcy thought, unwittingly, that the movement somehow made him look both young and ageless at the same time. 

“You scare me, Darcy Lewis,” he said, with a small smile and eyes that didn’t quite reach her own. “You scare me because you’re a good person. You accept people into your life and you do things for them, things that are life changing, and you do them just because you think you should.”

“That’s...That’s normal,” she protested, sitting forward and shoving a handful of hair out of her face and behind one ear. “That’s what people do.”

Barnes’ eyes raked across her, and he smiled again, crooked and only one side lifting as he huffed out a laugh that rumbled from his chest. 

“Ah, kid,” he said, shaking his head and looking up at her with something that looked an awful lot like fondness. “That is not how the world works. But you… You’re something else entirely. Something good.” His voice cracked a little on the last word, and his gaze dropped to the floor a moment, his fingers clutching into her leg a little harder. 

“That’s scary as fuck.” Barnes said finally. 

Darcy blinked at him. 

“Nice people worry you?” She asked, raising an eyebrow. She received a one shouldered shrug in return. “Yeah, well… I’m not nice.” She said, defiantly. Barnes looked somewhat amused and it served only to fire her more so. 

“Now you listen here, I could just-”

“You’re a nice girl, and that’s no bad thing,” Barnes interrupted, catching up her hands in his, glancing down briefly as sparks encircled their intertwined hands. He took a breath and looked up at her again, “I just - I just never met anyone like you. Not in this century, anyway.” He said, with a twisted look on his face. 

Darcy set her shoulders square. 

“Right,” she said, voice firm though inside she felt anything but. “You came back to let me know that nice people and magic scare you. Thanks for the update, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.” She pulled her hands away from his and drew back into the couch again, curling in on herself and looking at him with wide blue eyes. 

Barnes opened his mouth as if to say more, then shut it again. 

Darcy nodded, then scrambled to her feet, padding past him, sock clad feet making no noise as she made her way from the living room and across the kitchen to the door. She flung it open, and the bitter winter wind howled into the cottage, bringing with it a burst of snowflakes that danced in the air. 

She twisted her fingers and they froze in place, caught on a uplift like a wave that swung its way around her small body. Barnes appeared in the doorway, watching her as she cast her spell. The girl paused, then scooped the snowflakes out of the air and deposited them on the doorstep. 

Darcy turned back to him, one hand on the door and the other on her hip, and jerked her head toward the open doorway. Barnes, head lowered, made his way across the kitchen, until he’d passed her and was stood with one foot on the little uneven step. 

He paused. 

Her grip tightened on the door. 

He turned. 

And then his hand was at her cheek, cupping her, the other looping its way around her waist and dragging her flush against him. His mouth reached hers but for an inch between them, and she could feel the warmth of his breath over her face. 

“Let me show you,” he murmured. “Let me show you just once, what really scares me.”

He met her, tentative at first, his lips brushing over hers like a ghost trail. Barely there and yet sending a rush of heat coursing across her, a flush rising in her cheeks as he pressed against her properly. 

Darcy found her hands pushed against his chest, and gripping into his shirt as he deepened the kiss, one strong arm tight around her waist and pulling her ever closer whilst he claimed her mouth. She had to reach up on tiptoes to meet him properly, and she stumbled forward, unbalanced as she stretched. 

She could feel him grin a little against her as she tightened her hold on his shirt as she wobbled, and then his tongue was running along the edge of her lower lip before he slipped inside. Darcy couldn’t help but kiss him back, as hard as he kissed her. The frustration and sadness that had lurked within her the past two months spilled up, and she kissed him to let him know how he’d hurt her. 

He kissed her to tell her that he knew. 

Finally, he broke back, a little breathless, his hand stroking at the side of her face. 

“I, uh, I’ll be going,” he said, eyes dragging across her face as he stepped back, out of the door and into the night, hands falling from where they’d been gripping at her. 

Darcy gaped at him. 

“That’s what you think is the next step here?” She asked, incredulous. He looked from her to the road behind him and back again, expression lost. 

“You… You don’t want me here.” Barnes answered, and the wind whipped around him, catching at his hair and ruffling it over his face. The snow in the air danced like icing sugar, dusting around his shoulders and settling around him as he stood. 

“When did I say that?” Darcy asked, stepping out into the snow, her woollen socks soaking up the moisture from the snow and freezing her toes as she moved toward him. “You can’t kiss a girl and run away, Barnes. It’s rude.”

She’d reached him by that point, staring up at him defiantly as the snow storm whirled around them both, her multicoloured socks turning dark as she stood in the snow in front of him. The dark haired man bit on his lip and crooked a half smile before speaking. 

“Manners, remember?” He said. “Something I need desperately.”

Darcy nodded, and reached up to grasp at his shirt again, pulling him closer to her. The man moved willingly, catching his breath slightly at the fire in her eyes as she pressed herself against him. 

“I thought you said there was something else you needed.” 

It wasn’t a question, not the way she’d phrased it, but he nodded dumbly anyway and surrendered himself as she kissed him. Cold hands found their way around his neck, and he reached down to grasp at her thighs and haul her up against him, lifting her out of the snow until she could wrap herself around his waist. He managed not to break the kiss as he moved. 

He managed not to break the kiss as he walked her back inside, and kicked the door shut behind them without looking. 

He managed not to break the kiss until he lowered her onto her bed, and he was kneeling above her, the both of them breathless and flushed from the cold and the adrenaline that had skin trembling and blood racing. 

He hesitated as he looked down at her, dark hair fanned out on the blanket, and she rolled her eyes at him before hooking an arm around his neck and pulling him down for another kiss that had him groaning and dropping down against her. 

“Barnes-” Darcy whispered against him, pulling back slightly, and he focused on her, leaning on one elbow so that his weight was not crushing the girl. “Barnes, don’t leave again.” Her face was serious, for all that her hair was tangled and her lips kiss-swollen. 

“This is your home.” She said, voice serious as her fingers carded softly through his hair. He closed his eyes at the gentle pleasure of it, and pressed his lips against the sharp jut of her collarbone, bare to him where he’d pulled her t-shirt to one side. 

“I’ve not had a proper home in too long of a time,” he said, eyes shut as she continued to play with his hair. He traced a finger over the sliver of bare skin that was available to him, between the waistband of her jeans and the hem of her t-shirt, ridden up high on her ribcage as she lay half under him. Darcy shivered under his touch. 

Barnes opened his eyes and regarded her seriously, fingers stilling in their movements and laying his hand flat against her stomach. 

“Don’t know if I know what home means, anymore,” he said quietly. “There’s things… Things you don’t know about me. Things you need to-”

She put a finger to his mouth and shook her head. 

“Later,” she promised. “Later you can tell me all the awful things you’ve done since 1917, James Barnes, and I’ll listen to you. And you’ll turn your head and you’ll expect me to want you to leave when I hear it, and I’ll tell you you’re an idiot and make more coffee that you pretend to drink but actually tip out into that Yucca plant I keep by the living room door.”

Barnes snorted, despite himself. 

“And what now then, Darcy Lewis?” He asked, looking at her from where he was curled over the girl. “If that’s later, what now?”

“Now,” she answered with a wicked smile that had him wondering all sorts of things, and had his fingers running along the edge of her jeans and daring to dip underneath. “Now it’s time to make it up to me for leaving.”

“I can do that,” he promised, capturing her lip again with his own and kissing her until she groaned and wriggled underneath him. “I can do that.”

Barnes awoke the next morning with the sunlight streaming through the window, blinds forgotten by them both to be closed, and memories of the night before dancing happily behind his eyes. Memories of her shifting underneath him, of clothes that were discarded quickly and were even now hanging from bits of furniture or strewn over the floor where they’d been flung without regard. 

Memories of pushing into her, and the noises she’d made when he’d done it, of his hands over her body, them both illuminated in the candlelight. Candlelight which had flared brightly every time he’d teased at her; with fingers or mouth or buried deep inside her and marvelling at his own luck to find a girl that actually wanted him. 

Memories of sweat slick bodies moving together, fast at first, chasing an end they’d both been looking for since they’d met, not realising the spark that had ignited between them. Memories of a languid second and third time, moving together for no particular reason other than that they had each other, and they could. The deep sigh that she made when she finished, hands clutching at his shoulders and eyes fierce, mouth searching for his. 

Darcy was curled around him now, the morning sunlight catching the flecks of gold that ran through her dark hair, highlighting the curve of her cheek and the pink of her lips. Barnes wrapped an arm closer around her, drawing her more firmly into his chest and she sighed prettily as he moved her. 

She stretched in her sleep, and he thought idly that there was something a little cat like about it, and that thought made him smile to himself.

"Merry Christmas, Darcy Lewis."


End file.
